I saw Meet Me In St Louis and It's a Wonderful Life for the first time last year, at our local indie cinema Xmas weekend. This year it's Bad Santa and White Christmas. We're taking our two families to see the latter this Sunday: the former probably not a good idea.

I would have squeezed in more if I could, but I was going for the ones I really have to see in the festive season: I watched The Sound of Music the other week and for me it's a possible all-year-rounder

And I forgot about Go- terrific little film, happens to be set at Christmas. I've always kept an eye out for what the screenwriter John August did next. Not much of note, as it happens (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle?), but I do remember his recent effort The Nines being criticised for being unnecessarily complicated, which sounds like a recommendation to me.

Ahem. For a good Christmas howl, as a teenager I used to stay up late to watch The Christmas Tree with William Holden. Shamefully sentimental, it was as a good nog to the egg of all that pubescent angst.

What's most notably rattling my chain are the films of Christmases future, or if I'm really lucky, Christmas present: